This blog tracks a ten year epic of kick-starting a whole writing career, with spies and thrillers and now, vampires. I cover the creative process, stuff that blows up, history, philosophy, and theology. If you like any or all of the above, you'll like this one. We talk about comic books, movies, music, and writing. Usually, all at the same time.

Okay. Bujold is good. Novik is ... okay, I guess. I gave up after she rewrote Waterloo.

Everyone else ... should I have heard of these people? I'm almost surprised that they're just this obscure. Then again, I wouldn't have heard of Jemisin without the whole Hugo mess, so I'm not surprised.

But where's Honor Harrington?

Where's Black Tide Rising?

Where's Terry Goodkind?

Where is any of a half dozen other, good, BETTER writers? You know, the people who sell ten times the books than these folks? If these represent all of fandom, shouldn't we be expecting more best sellers on the list? After all, you become a bestseller by selling more books than other people. So ... where are the big names? There are six nominees here, but only two are people I can pick out of a lineup? Really?

But of course, this doesn't represent all of fandom, this just represents an ever shrinking niche that is WorldCon.

Best fan writer is interesting, if only because it's Mike Glyer (770), Jeffro Johnson (Castalia), Chuck Tingle (anarchist), and Foz Meadows, who I'm sure I should know of offhand, but danged if I know who it is. There's also a Natalie Luhrs and Abigail Nussbaum.

But best dramatic presentation, long form .... look at this

Arrival -- okay. Sure. I've heard good things.

Deadpool -- not surprised

Hidden Figures -- Who? What? Huh?

Rogue One -- Eh. Okay. It was entertaining.

Stranger Things, Season One-- I've also heard good things about this.

Ghostbusters, -- AAARRRRGGGHHH. Expect this to win. Because the Hugos

Argh, this is depressing me. Let's see if I can plow through the rest of this without getting an ulcer.

And, as someone just pointed out to me: all but one of the John W. Campbell Award nominees are women. What are the odds of that, considering they are "clearly an oppressed and underrepresented member of literary society?"

The expanse was OK and less nihilistic and better balanced than GRR Martin's work, but you still get strong empowered grrrrrls (and martian marines), the gay lesbian couple as major players a few books in, excuses for a thinly veiled PLO, "communism that works" and so forth.

Goodkind - really liked the Sword of Truth but got really tired after a few books of getting beaten over the head with ideology even if I agreed with it - the book where he carves the statues stands out despite the preaching, as does the followup, but I got tired of it.

And yeah, the finalists list looks like crap, and no surprise they lied about Toni.

Terry Goodkind? Are you kidding? The first three books in his series were okay at best (sans some ridiculous and unecessary explicit stuff). But post-Confessor, have you attempted to read The Omen Machine and beyond? Trainwreck doesn't even begin to describe it. I don't have any particular hatred of Goodkind, but to argue that he should be on the shortlist of anything for best series is absurd.

Thank you. I knew I've run across the name at least once.I should probably research. Considering that Vox didn't have Clamps put away in jail, or a booby hatch, I have to figure that Foz did something to really piss him off.

So we'll be back to the award being decided by about 200 people, if that. But hey, TOR's happy, they'll sweep the awards. I suspect we'll hear something about 'The Year of the Women' or something like that (even though Charlie is just a guy in drag) as almost all the nominee's are women and I suspect all of the winners will be women.

Obvious, you're the one with a complete lack of math skills. As well as English skills.

First off I said 'We'll be back to' not 'we are back to'. Future tense, not present tense.

Second, of the people who voted, how many do you think will be attending the convention? How many of the ones voting are doing so because they were members last year? You know, the year where a number of authors bought a couple of hundred memberships to give to their friends and 'like minded people' so they could stack the vote? Oh wait, I wasn't supposed to comment on that, because it's okay when your side breaks the rules.

Historically, the voting at the convention is less than the nominating votes. If they're not back to the low numbers they historically have gotten prior to the whole SP thing this year, I'm sure they will be next year.

1. I didn't say less than 200 people would be voting, I said that the results would be determined by less than 200 people. Which, except for the 'puppy' years has been historically true. The winner usually got less than 200 votes to win.

2. It did happen. Everyone knows it happened, they were advertising about it! Where were you? In a cave? Or back in the mental institute under going more therapy?

3. Didn't move them at all, as I said above, historically the numbers of votes are small. Without the 'Puppy' voters who increased voting to levels not seen before in decades, if ever, it will go back to being decided by a small minority.Who all work for TOR.

Well, thank you for playing, please see the girl on the way out to pick up a copy of the board game! We're sorry that you didn't win anything, but then, you never do.

I totally get where you are coming from. I felt the same kind of crushing disappointment when the Oscars blackballed my favorite movies from last year. They didn't nominate "God is Dead?" or its brilliant sequel. None of the Atlas Shrugged movies got nominated. Not even the new adaptation of "Left Behind" was nominated for Best Picture! I really thought one of those movies where a baby dies, meets Jesus, and then is brought back to life would have at least earned Actor or Actress nominations for the baby actors. As Jon Del Arroz says, these fine movies were BLACKBALLED!

Honor Harrington used to be pretty good, but IMO it went downhill after Honor became Mary Sue, and the infodumps got longer and longer. If you could separate out the earlier books and nominate them as a series, that would be better. Temeraire is good in a lot of ways, but I have issues with Novik's worldbuilding.

Technomad: While I wouldn't call her a Mary Sue, I will concur that the books have gone down hill. It felt like the last few books have been spinning their wheels. We've covered the massive strike on Manticore from three points of view already? I feel like the last five books could have been three. Perhaps less.

The overall series though? I think it could easily take best series in a straight fight. If we cut out every series because it had a few weak entries, we'd probably never get anything nominated. Except Jim Butcher.

Please, by all means, leave a message below. I welcome any and all comments. However, language that could not make it to network television will result in your comment being deleted. I don';t like saying it, but prior events have shown me that I need to. Thanks.